


to build a home

by Flowerparrish



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Getting Together, Multi, OT4, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Slow Build, There will be a happy ending, but at the same time it's meant to be a feel good fic, i'm sure there will be angst eventually so you have been warned, probably?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:35:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16333016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: His only friends in the world are his ex-fiancée, her new boyfriend, and a recently deceased alien who ate his organs but at least felt bad about it afterwards. He’ll take kindness where he can get it.ORHow the interpersonal relationships between Eddie, Venom, Anne, and Dan develop over time.





	1. the world spins madly on

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone who asked me to try to write a multi-chapter work for this pairing; this literally would not exist without you. 
> 
> Also for [kaoticalmanac,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoticalmanac/pseuds/Kaoticalmanac) for beta-reading and general cheerleading. This fic might exist without you, but it definitely wouldn't be any good. 
> 
> This fic's rating will probably increase over time to at least an M, but I'll warn individual chapters when the time comes. 
> 
> Song for this chapter (aka the song I had on repeat while writing it) is The World Spins Madly On - The Weepies. (idk if every chapter will have a song but it's likely that at least the first few will)

 

_Woke up, and wished that I was dead_

_With an aching in my head_

_I lay motionless in bed_

_I thought of you and where you’d gone_

_And let the world spin madly on_

Eddie hits the water and the force of the fall knocks all of the air out of his body. His vision goes black, but only partially, and he struggles through the water, unsure which way is up, until his body finally breaks the surface.

 

It hurts almost as much as the words **_Goodbye, Eddie_** echoing in his head. Venom sacrificed himself to save Eddie, and he’s alive, but he’s still battered and bruised and, worst of all, he’s alone.

 

He swims for shore, the cold water seeping into his bones, and by the time he makes it, his whole body is involuntarily shaking. He could head back to the Life Foundation, could find Anne, but he can already see emergency response vehicles headed toward the building, and he’s not eager to deal with the police. He turns way instead, back toward the city, toward lights and the illusion of warmth.

 

He walks. He’s too exhausted to think or to stop, because if he stops he isn’t sure he’ll ever get back up.

 

He ends up at home. It’s technically not his home anymore, it’s Anne’s home, but it’s still the place he thinks of as home. He can tell by the lightening darkness that it’s been hours since he started walking. He doesn’t have a key, not anymore, so he rings the bell and waits.

 

An indeterminate time later—seconds? minutes?—the door swings open to reveal Anne, disheveled, wearing sweatpants and an old marathon t-shirt.

 

“Eddie!” She grabs him by the shoulders, looking him over, before cupping his face. “What happened? I thought you’d died!”

 

Her eyes are red, he notices, and that’s… something. “Venom saved me,” he tells her.

 

“Good,” she says fiercely, but then her eyes narrow before slowly widening. “But, fire is…” She trails off. Eddie looks away from her eyes, from the understanding he sees there. He doesn’t want to have to say it out loud; if he says that Venom is gone, then it’s true, and that’s not a reality he can cope with at this precise moment in time.

 

She knows him so well, even after all of these months. She doesn’t make him say it; she lets him go instead. He feels the loss of warmth from their points of contact like pain.

 

“I didn’t know where to go,” he says, and it’s like he’s realizing the words for the first time. “Drake’s guys tore up my apartment.”

 

Anne purses her lips, but then she nods firmly. “Come in,” she commands, steel in her tone. Eddie thinks about saying no. But he’s still shivering, and he’s tired, and his body is one mass of soreness and pain, and she’s bumping the door of their old home open with her hip, and he _can’t_ say no.

 

“Okay,” he agrees.

 

Inside, Anne leads him into the kitchen, where Eddie sees that Dan is also awake and assembling what looks like hot chocolate. Like, he’s heating up milk on the stove instead of sticking individual cups of water into the microwave, because the man is _that perfect._

 

Eddie can’t even be bitter or jealous. He’s too busy being focused on the fact that there’s three mugs, which means he’s getting on, and on the fact that he can see the couch in the other room from here, and it looks more comfortable than his shitty mattress in his shitty apartment anyway.

 

Dan gently patted Eddie on the shoulder when he handed him a mug. Eddie realized he’d spaced for a minute and missed something being said, some exchange between Anne and Dan, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

 

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Dan told him. The sincerity of it would have shaken Eddie, if he wasn’t too tired to care at this point.

 

“Thanks,” he mumbled, and promptly busied himself drinking the too hot drink so he wouldn’t be expected to talk anymore.

 

The warmth seeps into him slowly. He becomes aware of a gnawing hunger deep inside, but the chocolate soothes even that.

 

“—we didn’t have tea,” Dan is saying, and Eddie realizes he’s spaced out yet again.

 

“This is perfect,” Eddie assures him tiredly. “Thanks, man.”

 

“Of course,” Dan says, patting Eddie on the shoulder again. The movement is awkward, but it’s also a kindness Eddie isn’t sure he deserves.

 

His only friends in the world are his ex-fiancée, her new boyfriend, and a recently deceased alien who ate his organs but at least felt bad about it afterwards. He’ll take kindness where he can get it.

 

“Can I crash on the couch?” he brings himself to ask.

 

“Of course,” Anne says instantly.

 

“I’ll get you something dry to sleep in,” Dan tells him, leaving Eddie and Anne alone.

 

“Are you okay?” she asks him, intense. She’s intense when she cares about something, he knows; it’s what makes her such a good lawyer.

 

“No,” he admits honestly.

 

She frowns at him but nods anyway. “It’s going to be okay,” she promises.

 

He doesn’t believe her. But he wants to. Maybe that’s a start.

 

Dan comes back and hands Eddie a pair of plaid pajama pants, a threadbare t-shirt, and a hoodie. Eddie’s shocked that the man owns any hoodies, because he’s only ever seen him look put together. Even now, in what are presumably his pajamas, he looks a bit like a male model. (Eddie’s perfectly aware that his normal outfit of a hoodie and dirty jeans makes him look like a bum.) “I thought you might need something warm,” he says.

 

Eddie nods. “It’s great, thanks.” He stands there, awkwardly, before the other two seem to process that the next step in this equation is for him to get naked. He’s almost too tired to care about doing it in the same room as them—even considering who they are in relation to him—but he thinks he’d regret it more later.

 

It only takes a moment for them to come to the realization, though, and they jolt into action at the same time. It should make Eddie’s heart hurt, to see them move as a unit. He isn’t sure why it doesn’t.

 

He’s probably just tired.

 

“I’ll get you a blanket and pillow,” Anne says, quickly leaving.

 

Dan is right behind her, but he stops just before leaving the room to glance at Eddie one more time. “We’re both really glad you’re alright,” he says, again with the near painful sincerity, before he ducks his head and leaves the room.

 

Eddie makes short work of changing and hovers, waiting for Anne to return. The empty room makes his loneliness that much more obvious. Did he always feel this alone in his head?

 

Anne returns and hands him a blanket that’s unfamiliar and a pillow that he’s pretty sure used to be his. He experiences a kind of cognitive dissonance at a reminder of their old life together side by side with a reminder that she’s moved on.

 

“Thanks,” he tells her. “For everything.”

 

Her lips tighten like she’s holding something back, but after a moment she nods. “Of course, Eddie. Sleep well.”

 

“Sleep well,” he says, instead of _sorry._ Sorry for bursting back into your life. Sorry for not apologizing sooner. Sorry I haven’t moved on when you so obviously have. Sorry I have nowhere else to go.

 

The couch is just as comfortable as he remembers it being. He’s asleep almost before he’s even finished settling down, his aching body melting into the cushions.

 

Just before he falls asleep, he thinks he hears a voice, _Venom’s_ voice, calling out his name. But it’s weak and faint, and he still hears echoes of **_Goodbye, Eddie_** in the back of his head when he isn’t purposefully blocking it out, so he’s pretty sure it’s just that, another echo, his loneliness and guilt manifesting.

 

He sleeps.

 

-

 

Eddie wakes up feeling like shit. His head feels like someone put his brain in a blender, and his nose is stuffed up, and he’s somehow both nauseous and _ravenous_ at the same time.

 

The clock on the wall says that it’s after ten, meaning Anne and Dan are probably at work. Eddie reflects that if Anne was a reasonable human, then the trauma of the night’s events would cause her to miss at least one day of work, but Anne wouldn’t skip work for anything short of the apocalypse (and probably not even then), so he’s not surprised that she’s gone out.

 

He pushes himself up and stumbles into the kitchen, where he finds a pot of coffee still lukewarm next to a clean mug and a note. _Make yourself at home,_ it reads, and he’d find it cruel if it was Anne’s handwriting, but it isn’t, and Dan doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body.

 

He drinks two cups of coffee and his stomach reacts by making him both more nauseous and more ravenous. The only things he can find in the fridge are vegetables—disgusting—but in the freezer he finds Anne’s weakness: a bag of chocolate chips.

 

He doesn’t really process what happens next. One minute, he’s grabbing a handful; the next, the mostly full bag is empty in his hands.

 

He’s still hungry, but he’s not _starving_ like he was before. He gets a glass of water and carries it back to the couch, sipping slowly.

 

He still feels like crap—he’s pretty sure that even with Venom shielding him from the worst of the explosion, his whole body is going to settle into one giant bruise—and he’s stuck on Anne’s couch for the foreseeable future, which is something he’s not ready to contemplate. With nothing else to do, he settles down to take a nap.

 

-

 

Eddie sleeps through any attempt Anne or Dan might have made to wake him up for dinner, and keeps sleeping right on through the night. He wakes up the next morning to the smell of bacon, and he’s ravenous once more.

 

“Hey,” he says, approaching the kitchen to see Dan cooking at the stove.

 

“Good morning,” Dan says warmly. “Are you feeling better?”

 

Eddie considers. “Yeah,” he decides. He was right—his body is one giant bruise—but his head cold has diminished.

 

He’s also quickly becoming aware of how awkward this situation is, and he’s determined to rectify it. He resolves to call his landlord about the apartment. But after breakfast.

 

He gets coffee for himself from the pot—he ignores the small thrill of victory he feels when he finds the mugs in the same cupboard they were in when this was still his home, too—and settles down at the table.

 

Dan, who probably isn’t a saint but also probably should be, brings Eddie a plate piled high with scrambled eggs and bacon.

 

Anne joins them, when Eddie’s in the middle of devouring the meal, and she and Dan make quiet conversation. She tries to engage Eddie a couple of times, but his stomach protests that eating is more important than making conversation, and after he brushes her off a couple of times with mono-syllabic responses she leaves him alone.

 

After breakfast, Eddie insists on washing up, and Anne and Dan head out to work.

 

His phone call with his landlord does not go well. But Eddie secures a promise that the windows, at least, will be fixed by the end of the week. He considers checking into a cheap motel for a couple of nights, but his meager bank account balance convinces him not to. He can suffer through staying on Anne’s couch for a couple more days.

 

Probably.

 

There’s a spare key on the counter where the note was yesterday, so Eddie figures it’s fair game and he takes it, heading out into the world again. The city is a mess of destruction from the car chase that Eddie blames fully on Carlton Drake. The only consolation is that, according to the papers, people from the Life Foundation are talking in the wake of the explosion and general mayhem at the compound, and the city seems to blame Drake for the carnage, too.

 

Eddie wanders back to his old neighborhood and into Mrs. Chen’s store. “You look less like shit,” she tells him, friendly as always.

 

“I must have looked pretty bad before, then,” he tells her.

 

“You did.” Her voice is disdainful, but her eyes are concerned.

 

“Well, you remain as lovely as ever,” he tells her.

 

He grabs a prepackaged sandwich and looks at chips, but he’s craving _something._ He just can’t figure out what. But then he spies the candy by the register, and he realizes it’s chocolate.

 

Whatever, his bank account can afford for him to splurge on a couple of chocolate bars. (Probably.)

 

He buys it all and heads to his apartment, on autopilot for a few minutes before he realizes that it’s going to be the same mess he left behind days ago. But he doesn’t have anywhere better to go, and he might as well see what he can salvage.

 

The table is beyond busted. There are bullet holes in the cabinets. There are bullet holes everywhere, really, in the walls and the floor. The windows are wrecked, and the whole place is as freezing as he imagined it would be. He eats his sandwich standing at the counter by the sink and leaves the trash behind on the counter, because there’s already trash scattered across the floor, so there’s no point in trying not to make a mess.

 

He leaves and eats the chocolate as he walks back to Anne’s, savoring the taste. He’s not sure when chocolate became this _good;_ he’s always liked sweets but never felt this satisfied after eating them.

 

He watches TV until Anne gets home. She brings take out with her, and Dan’s cooking is amazing, but take out is Eddie’s comfort food. It’s something Anne knows and it’s clear from the state of their very healthy fridge that she’s done this to make Eddie feel better. He accepts the kindness and tries not to feel hope that maybe, after all of this, he can salvage some kind of relationship with her. It’s more than he deserves, after all.

 

Dan doesn’t get home until after ten, looking exhausted. He greets Eddie with a smile and Anne with a kiss before making himself a plate of food. He eats it alone at the table, looking like he’s going to fall asleep between bites, and Eddie finds himself volunteering to clear his plate when he’s done.

 

He tells himself that he’s just being nice because he feels bad for overstaying his welcome. It’s not because he likes Dan, because who could like their ex-fiancée’s new boyfriend? Definitely not him.

 

Anne follows Dan into their bedroom and Eddie settles in to sleep on the couch again, because he doesn’t want to turn on the TV and risk keeping them awake. Usually he’d read, but none of his books are here and he hates Anne’s mystery thriller novels.

 

He’s almost asleep again when he hears it, weak and faint though it is. **_Eddie,_** says the voice, trailing off on the second syllable. It’s faint, but it’s unmistakably _there._

 

Venom is still alive.

 

Venom isn’t gone.

 

Eddie is suddenly very, very awake.


	2. hell or high water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie tries to put his mess of a life back together. It goes better than expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [kaoticalmanac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoticalmanac/pseuds/Kaoticalmanac) for betaing, cheerleading, and generally being the most helpful person in the world. This chapter would have been about a quarter of the length without his help. 
> 
> This chapter is not super focused on building any of the relationships--I'm sorry! That's what made me put off writing it for so long, but in the end I felt like it was necessary to devote at least a bit of time to Eddie trying to pick up the broken pieces of his life. I hope you like it anyway, and promise that there will be at the very least more Venom, and probably Anne, next chapter. (Maybe even Venom POV? Let me know if that's something you're interested in!)

Eddie moves back into his apartment, and out of Anne’s, two days later. Anne and Dan both assure him that he’s welcome to stay for longer, but Eddie knows that there’s nothing worse than a guest who overstays their welcome, and to be honest hasn’t ruled out the possibility he may need to rely on their hospitality again in the future, so he’s eager to move on for now. Plus, the longer he’s around the two of them, the more awkward feelings start getting in the way; it’s painfully obvious to him that he’s a third wheel, even though they both make efforts to engage him in conversations.

 

The other reason he has for moving out is that Venom, although still only a weak and quiet presence inside of him, is growing stronger, and Eddie isn’t yet willing to tell Anne, much less Dan, about the symbiote’s miraculous survival. He knows logically that he should, but some feeling stops him short whenever he goes to say something about it—a fear that somehow, Venom will be taken away from him, this time for good, if anyone finds out.

 

Before this, he would have said he trusted Anne with anything. Certainly he trusts her with his life. But his relationship with Venom has somehow become something even more precious than that.

 

It’s fucking ridiculous, but that’s where he’s at.

 

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?” Anne asks, her hand on Eddie’s arm as he goes to leave.

 

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” Dan chips in.

 

“Nah, it’s fine,” Eddie assures them. **Stay,** Venom says in the back of his head, and Eddie ignores that too, except to send a wave of happiness at Venom so as to acknowledge that he’s happy the symbiote is recovering. “My place should be fixed up now,” he lies, because he knows for a fact that it’s only the windows and pretty much all he’s got left is a bed. A bed that might have bullet holes.

 

So Anne hugs him, and then Dan hugs him, and then he’s heading back to his apartment in the shady part of town.

 

He stops in at Mrs. Chen’s to pick up a sandwich and some tater tots, along with more chocolate—he’s figured out by now that that’s Venom’s craving, not his, and if it helps his symbiote regenerate he’ll eat all the chocolate he can afford to buy.

 

“Eddie!” she greets as he walks in, the bell ringing out through the small shop. “Have you been meditating like I suggested?”

 

“Not yet,” he tells her as he makes a beeline for the section of the store with prepackaged and frozen foods. “Just heading back to my place today, I’ve been staying with some friends.”

 

“You look good for not meditating.” She’s frowning at him, but her eyes are twinkling. “Of course, you’ll look even better if you start meditating.”

 

He drops his food on the counter, scoops up a handful of chocolate bars and piles them on top, and smiles when her glower intensifies. “This is not healthy food,” she accuses, even as she starts ringing it all up.

 

“That it isn’t,” Eddie agrees. He hands over his last twenty-dollar bill; he really needs to find a job. There’s some money still in his bank account, but not enough to feed him, a regenerating symbiote, and put down money for a new apartment, even if he stays in this part of town. Maybe now that Drake’s been exposed the blacklist on Eddie’s name will go away—he can hope. He has to hope. “Thanks Mrs. Chen,” he tells her, smiling wide in spite of his anxieties. “I’ll see you soon.”

 

“Start meditating,” she tells him, instead of saying goodbye.

 

He loves their relationship.

 

As he leaves the store and heads back to his apartment—which he definitely does _not_ think of as home—he passes Maria’s old spot and feels a rush of sadness and guilt. Her death tugs at his heart, and he feels even worse for the fact that he’s barely thought about it, allowing himself to get distracted by everything going on. He knows Drake’s been taken down and that justice will have to be enough for her memory… but it doesn’t feel like enough when he remembers her desperation to escape, his desperation to help her, and the fact that he was too late.

 

 **Sorry, Eddie,** Venom says from the back of his head.

 

But that’s the thing, he can’t blame Venom for what happened to Maria. Venom was only doing what he had to in order to survive; Maria wasn’t a perfect host, or even a particularly good one, but killing her wasn’t Venom’s first choice. Venom may have been the weapon Drake used to kill Maria and probably others, but it was Drake who caused those deaths.

 

Eddie feels relief from Venom at his lack of blame, before Venom settles back into a quiet, barely-there presence in the back of his mind. But he is there, so that’s okay.

 

His apartment is just as awful as he left it days before, with the added bonus of new windows. Some of the bigger pieces of glass have been cleaned up as well, so Eddie supposes he can’t complain too hard.

 

The oven is dented, but it turns on, so he gets tater tots cooking as he checks his fridge over. Also dented, bullets scattered on the ground around it, but it’s held up alright. He puts the sandwich away, figuring he’ll save it for later, especially with all of the chocolate and the full bag of tater tots he’s about to devour. He eats five bars of chocolate, slowly, while he waits for the potatoes to cook, and then he crams them in his face still too hot from the oven and burns his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

 

The hunger is somewhat satiated. That’s probably as good as it’s going to get, because his stomach feels like it’s going to fucking burst.

 

His couch is beyond destroyed, so he flops onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out what he should do next.

 

It’s terrifying to have a purpose after all of these months of living day to day, even if his only purpose is to pick up the pieces of his life and support his new alien bodymate’s recovery. But Venom protected him during all the shit that went down, nearly died protecting him; the least he can do is return the favor and figure out a way to make enough money to keep them fed, and maybe find them a place to live without bullet holes everywhere. He can do this. He can.

 

The first step, he decides after about half an hour of not-quite-panicking, is to recover his phone. He can’t apply for jobs or new apartments without a way for people to contact him, and he can’t afford to just cancel his old phone and buy a new one. So that means going back to his old boss and asking for it back—when he left it for them to use, he honestly didn’t think he’d live long enough to have to deal with this. But then, that’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.

 

He changes out of the clothes he’s wearing that are still borrowed from Dan and thus ill-fitting, into his own now-standard outfit of frayed jeans and a hoodie. The walk to his old office is long and the air is crisp, but he relishes the cold air in his lungs and the burn of his muscles after a few days (okay, more like six months) of little use. He should probably get a bike—a regular bike, now that his old motorcycle’s definitely totaled from being hit by a SUV, and lost somewhere in the city to boot.

 

“What do you think, V?” he asks, not really expecting an answer.

 

He gets the tiniest rustle in the back of his mind, like someone shifting in their sleep, but no words or strong emotions. It’s not a lot, but it’s a reminder that he’s not totally alone.

 

The office is a fucking mess—he remembers, too late, being surrounded, bullets flying, Venom taking people down—but he’s happy to see that Richard is behind the security desk. “Hey man!” he greets excitedly.

 

“Eddie!” Richard doesn’t look too displeased to see him, considering that the last time he saw him a bunch of armed guards swarmed the building in pursuit of him shortly after. Maybe no one’s connected the dots between Venom and Eddie. That would be great, to be honest; he doesn’t want to deal with the cops, or people coming after them to try to study them… He holds in a shudder and gives Richard a smile instead.

 

“Is there any way I could see the boss? I just need my phone back,” he tells Richard.

 

“Let me call up,” Richard says, his expression turning dubious.

 

“I’ll wait here,” Eddie promises. He pulls his hands out of his pockets to offer a thumbs up before shoving them back into his hoodie.

 

Richard talks into the phone for about a minute before he hangs up and gives Eddie a surprised grin. “He says you can head on up,” he tells him.

 

“Thanks man,” Eddie tells him.

 

“No such thing as can’t, after all,” Richard tells him as he turns to walk over to the elevators.

 

He has to laugh, somewhat bitterly, at having his own words thrown back at him. “No such thing indeed,” he mumbles, waving over his shoulder as he walks away.

 

He reaches Jack’s office and is hit by the sense memory of Venom calling him a pussy when he refused to scale down the side of the building—Venom had been right about that, in the end—and it’s enough to have him entering the room with a small smile on his face, even if he’s still terrified of heights and isn’t super happy with Jack as a person, either.

 

“Eddie!” Jack is jovial, pleased to see him, which puts Eddie immediately on guard.

 

 **Do we need to eat him?** Venom asks from the back of his mind, the most words he’s spoken since Eddied realized he wasn’t dead.

 

 _No,_ Eddie thinks hard, and when he frowns it might as well be at Jack. The man clearly wants something. But he did do the right thing with the photos Eddie gave him, so Eddie isn’t annoyed enough to let them eat him. (Probably.)

 

“Hey,” Eddie says, shaking the offered hand and refusing to settle into a seat when Jack gestures for him to. “I’m just here to get my phone back.”

 

“Let’s chat first.”

 

Eddie sighs, but he needs his phone, so he takes a seat. Venom seems to be echoing his discontent, grumbling in the back of his mind. “What’s up?” Eddie asks, pretending he actually cares.

 

“We were very impressed with your investigative work on the Life Foundation,” Jack tells him. They’re words Eddie would have killed to hear a week ago; now, he just wants this over with.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“We want to offer you your job back,” Jack says, and those words… are a little better, Eddie’s got to admit.

 

In a lot of ways, it’s too little, too late. There’s no way for Eddie to get back the life he had. He isn’t even sure he’d do it, if he could take everything back. He’s building something new, now, and accepting this offer feels wrong.

 

On the other hand, he desperately needs money to survive, and his old job is the easiest way back into the industry.

 

“My show?” he asks, because he’d loved the Brock Report, loved it as much as he loved Anne (which, he can admit, was the problem in the end).

 

“Your show and everything else along with it,” Jack agrees.

 

“What’s the catch?” Eddie asks.

 

“No catch,” Jack promises. Eddie doesn’t believe him. There may not be a catch now, but it won’t last. Sooner or later, he’ll be asked to do an interview with someone as corrupt as Drake, another fluff piece, and he won’t be able to do it. He’ll be right back where he is now.

 

“I need time to consider,” Eddie says. It’s the responsible choice. If there’s nothing else for him, he’ll do this. But if he can just get his phone back, but his name out there, find _something…_

 

“Of course,” Jack says immediately, and Eddie can see the disappointment that he’s trying to hide. He feels vindicated by it. If they’d just stood by him, this wouldn’t be an issue.

 

(He knows, deep down, that they were right to fire him. But this still feels good.)

 

“Take a few days, think it over,” Jack offers. “We’ll expect to hear from you by the end of next week.” It’s a more than generous offer.

 

“Sounds good,” Eddie agrees. They sit in silence for a few moments. “My phone?” Eddie prompts.

 

“Of course,” Jack says, reaching into his desk and pulling it out. He passes it over to Eddie, who powers it on. 23% battery and everything, not bad.

 

He climbs out of the chair and turns to leave. “See you around.”

 

He says goodbye to Richard in the lobby and exits back out into the cold day, beginning the trek home. He checks his phone and finds a surprising number of voicemails, so he pulls up his voice mailbox and starts to listen.

 

He listens to the first one, and it’s just Anne, frantically trying to track him down.

 

He listens to the second and he stops walking, leaning against a building so he’s out of the flow of foot traffic.

 

He listens to the third, and his eyes grow wide.

 

He listens to all eight messages, his jaw dropping. He’s got seven job offers. Yeah, only five of them are journalist positions, two being from other random odd jobs he applied for who recognized his name now that it’s back in the papers, attached to the photos he took of the Life Foundation’s human trials. One of the job offers was from the fucking Daily Globe, the press that chased him out of New York.

 

He changes trajectory and heads to the library to look up the places offering him positions, feeling optimistic. Feeling _good._ He’s got Venom and he’s got new opportunities; he’s building his new life, and he’s tentatively hopeful that it’s going to be _amazing_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic has been so overwhelming and wonderful; I try to reply to every comment, but I want to say again that I'm so grateful to everyone who comments, it literally makes my day and encourages me to keep writing. <3
> 
> Final note: was the boss' name Lewis? Kaoticalmanac and I looked through IMDB and settled on him, but it's so very possible we're wrong. Please let me know if you've seen the movie recently or have a better memory and I'm wrong. Thanks guys! [edit 10/26: it's not Lewis, it's Jack! Fixed now :)]


	3. a reason to start over new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Venom has always wanted the kind of bond he shares with Eddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to try Venom's POV, and I'm not sure how much I liked it, but it's written, so I'm posting it? I'm definitely going back to Eddie's POV next chapter, but I'm glad I got some experience with an outside POV for chapters that will be happening later. Let me know what worked and what didn't, please, so I have a grasp on what I should do next time? 
> 
> Nothing... new really happens this chapter. Sorry. We'll move forward next time, I promise! With this, we're finally beyond canon entirely! Uncharted territory. <3

Venom has always wanted the kind of bond he shares with Eddie.

 

He almost failed to realize what he had, what a gift this bond between them was. He was simply happy to be in a body that didn’t immediately try to reject him, a body that was free to find food to sustain him. He had been a starving and desperate thing when he found Eddie; it had taken him time to settle into their bond and realize that they were better, stronger, together.

 

Once Venom had realized, it had almost been too late. They had been separated, and all Venom could focus on was getting back to his perfect host, to Eddie, to explain. He saw Eddie get taken and felt fear, although it was dull through the connection he had with the dog.

 

Rescuing Eddie was a relief, a revelation. His emotions called out _love,_ called out _protect,_ called out _mine,_ and they formed a feedback loop with Anne’s own grudging love for Eddie, resulting in the kiss that Venom used to reinstate their bond.

 

Knowing he would probably die, but die as part of a whole with Eddie, fighting to protect Eddie’s home that Venom had come to love, was acceptable. Being parted, again, too soon, was not.

 

Worse was finding Eddie dying, speared through by Riot, not knowing if he could put Eddie back together again. It took nearly everything Venom had, but he managed it, keeping Eddie’s heart beating and his blood moving in his veins until he could heal the organs internally.

 

Knowing that he would die, then, having saved Eddie’s world—that he would die protecting Eddie—that was permissible. His life, to save Eddie, was a fair trade.

 

Everything was fire, and pain, pieces of his body being burned away as he protected Eddie and slowed his fall. He had just enough time left to say **Goodbye, Eddie** and then he was gone…

 

Consciousness returns in a string of unclear moments. He is calmed only by the overwhelming presence of Eddie’s mind—a mind in turmoil, but now familiar to Venom, comforting in its proximity.

 

He tries to call out to Eddie in these moments, but he is too weak, too insubstantial, to make himself heard.

 

It felt like moments. It felt like eternity.

 

Slowly, he becomes more aware. He senses Dan and Anne around them; good, and bad. They will care for Eddie—Venom remembers how they have both showed an interest in Eddie’s wellbeing—but they might think that Eddie would be better off without Venom. Especially now, when he is truly weak, only a shadow of what he once was. He can’t be useful, right now, only drain Eddie’s energy without giving anything back.

 

He wouldn’t have cared, before, but now… he does. They’re supposed to be a _we._ Symbiotic. But what are they when Venom has nothing left to give?

 

At some point, Venom feels Eddie’s emotions turn tumultuous and tries to gain enough awareness to tune in to what’s happening. Eddie is anxious and uncomfortable, and Venom surfaces long enough to realize that Eddie is leaving the space he has been sharing with Anne and Dan. **Stay,** Venom tells him, because it may not be what’s best for Venom, but it is good for Eddie. They should care for Eddie, while Venom can’t.

 

He stays aware long enough to feel Eddie’s relief at his presence, along with a surge of… protectiveness?

 

Eddie leaves.

 

A bit disgruntled that Eddie ignored his perfectly good advice, Venom allows himself to drift once more, but does carefully watch Eddie’s emotions for indicators that he might be needed. There is little he can do, but without Anne and Dan to look after Eddie, Venom feels the need to be ready to do what he can.

 

The next spike of unpleasant emotions comes sooner than Venom would like, he muses as he drags himself to the surface amid Eddie’s mental chaos. There is no immediate danger in their surroundings, but Venom can sense Eddie’s thoughts. He is thinking of the death of the Venom’s previous host, before Eddie, the one Venom had to kill to survive. Her memories of Eddie had been fond, Venom remembers, beneath her desperation for escape and his desperation to find a better host. They had been friends.

 

 **Sorry, Eddie,** Venom says. Remorse for human life that is not Eddie’s or Anne’s is new and difficult to summon, but her loss hurts Eddie, and he feels remorse for that.

 

But he can feel that Eddie does not blame him, that this will not turn Eddie against him after everything. That is all that matters.

 

Venom settles back in their mind to rest, soothed by Eddie’s calming emotions.

 

Venom waits again for a surge in emotion and is rewarded by a happy one this time. He surfaces more quickly, somewhat energized, and catches the tail end of Eddie’s memory of them, together—that is what made him happy, which makes Venom happy in turn.

 

The happiness is quickly soured by the sight of a human Eddie does not like. **Do we need to eat him?** Venom asks, because he thinks it could be mutually beneficial to them.

 

But Eddie says no, so Venom lets the matter drop. For now.

 

The conversation is boring—for the most part, even Eddie is bored by it—so Venom allows himself to drift once more, but not fully, staying partly attuned to Eddie’s thoughts and emotions.

 

He feels Eddie’s joy at the job offers. He is happy for Eddie, even if he does not fully understand Eddie’s desire to be successful. Among his own people, Venom was successful enough to be chosen to accompany Riot to scout out the new planet and its life forms, yes, but mostly that meant that he was expendable. Venom has seen in Eddie’s mind how he felt equally expendable when Drake helped strip him of his career; it had been a comfort that they were both losers.

 

Eddie is still absolutely a loser, but he will be… less of one, when he regains a purpose. A purpose outside of them, something that is only his.

 

Venom is… reluctant. He does not want anything to come between them, to keep them apart. But he wants Eddie to be happy, and this makes Eddie happy.

 

Human life is confusing, as is true symbiosis.

 

He is musing on this as Eddie walks home, and it makes him pay less attention to their surroundings than he normally would.

 

He feels a spike of surprise from Eddie and focuses in time to see that they’re in an alley, and someone has pulled a knife on them.

 

Venom is good for very little in his current state. But this? This is laughable.

 

Eddie feels some fear, but that is only because he isn’t sure what Venom can do.

 

Venom stretches out its reach, feeling how far it goes. It is nothing like before, when he could be in every molecule of Eddie, but it’s getting there. It will be enough.

 

He envelopes Eddie in a fluid motion, towering over the stupid human who thought that attacking them would be a good idea. He smiles, opens his jaw wide, and bites off the human’s head before he can react.

 

Venom retreats, exhausted. The energy from eating something living will sustain them, but he needs to rest.

 

He briefly feels Eddie’s panic—something about the dead body before them—but he can’t hold his focus, and he’s slowly going back to darkness and rest.

 

-

 

He comes back to clarity to find Eddie having coffee with Anne. He’s happy, even when she mentions Dan—mentions, specifically, not telling Dan about the kiss that they—all three of them—shared.

 

 **Look at her,** Venom says, **she has no idea we are going to get her back.**

 

Eddie denies it, but Venom has been inside of Anne’s head. He knows that she still loves him. It is only a matter of time.

 

Eddie leaves Anne, running away in an attempt to keep her from figuring out that Venom is still there. Instead, he proceeds to attempt to explain to Venom what people they are allowed to eat. Venom does not understand the emphasis humans place on good or bad; to Venom, there are only important humans (Eddie, Anne) and unimportant humans (anyone who is not important to Eddie or Anne). But, for Eddie, he will attempt to figure it out.

 

Plus, they find a bad human right away—he makes a much better dinner than even tater tots and chocolate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again (and always) to kaoticalmanac for beta-ing, and for looking at the 400 words it took me 4 days to write and talking me through what came next. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who comments; you make this story worth writing, for me, and give me a lot of joy. As always, feel free to come hang out with me over on tumblr @ flowerparrish! I love hearing from you guys and chatting.
> 
> Final note, I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to update going forward (I'm busy with grad school, and I have three conferences coming up, and final papers... ugh) but I'm going to aim for at least once a week. I'm doing NaNoWriMo, and this isn't the only thing I'll be working on, but it is one of the stories I'll be writing. So if it takes a bit longer than any of us would like, I apologize, but I promise I won't abandon this. <3


	4. I can finally see you're as fucked up as me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life moves on, but it isn't without struggles.

Eddie doesn’t dream of falling. Not always, anyway. It would make more sense, he thinks, if that’s what he was hung up on, because it combines his fear of heights with his loss of Venom.

 

Instead, he dreams of Riot impaling him from behind, of being slumped over and bleeding out, reaching out for Venom but not even knowing if the symbiote was alive, could reach him in time, could help him if he did…

 

Venom knows not to wake him forcefully from these dreams, either by speaking in his head or shaking him awake.

 

His memories always trigger a sense of panic in Venom, a helplessness matching and feeding off of Eddie’s own. The negative cycle is the last thing either of them need, so Venom often tries to pull away, to make himself smaller in Eddie’s mind, to leave him to sort himself out.

 

This has its drawbacks, as Eddie remembers dying alone; it is hard for his panic-stricken mind to reconcile his miraculous recovery with Venom’s apparent absence—he needs the symbiote to feel whole, to be whole.

 

Eddie finally gasps himself awake, soaked in sweat, eyes frantically searching the dim light of the room for threats. There’s nothing—just his shitty apartment, because he doesn’t have enough money saved up to find a better place yet. His heartbeat gradually starts to slow, but the panic isn’t receding entirely.

 

“Venom?” Eddie asks into the darkness, half expecting not to get a response.

 

 **Here,** Venom says immediately, emerging from the recesses of Eddie’s mind to thrum through his veins once more. Eddie doesn’t know what it says about him that this is the only thing that can soothe him these days, the feeling of two beings sharing every molecule of what used to be his body, but is now theirs.

 

“Good,” Eddie breathes out on a sigh. “Fuck.”

 

Venom doesn’t say anything, but Eddie feels his agreement to the sentiment. His nightmares and panic aren’t a fun experience for either of them.

 

He’s startled by something wrapping around his chest, but recognizes it as one of Venom’s tendrils snaking around him. It is quickly joined by others, until Eddie is cradled, as if he were being held. He places his hand over them, parallel to where they rest above his calming heartbeat, and basks in the feeling of them, together, whole.

 

“Thanks,” Eddie tells him.

 

Venom doesn’t respond; he doesn’t need to respond. Eddie knows he feels the same about their bond, feels the same about Eddie as Eddie feels about him. All of this emotional attachment would be more terrifying if it wasn’t so clearly reciprocated, but as it is, Eddie can only feel grateful that they get to be here, together, and figure it out in time.

 

-

 

Despite the fact that he isn’t sleeping well most nights, Eddie has enough energy to throw himself into his new job. Print journalism comes with new challenges—for example, a higher degree of formality and a new emphasis on grammatical conventions—but it also comes with perks. The main one is that Eddie has been off-screen for long enough that people don’t recognize him in public very often these days. Like, his name still means something, but now it’s just words on a page rather than words attached to his image.

 

He might not have considered this a perk before, when his ego was a bit bigger, before he got wrecked, but now he’s—maybe? probably?—a little bit of a serial killer, what with Venom eating people, even if those people are usually killers themselves. Plus, these days Eddie has a habit of walking around the city (seemingly) talking to himself, so divorcing his image from his name can only be good for his overall reputation.

 

It helps that he gets to spend his time working on anything he can uncover from the Life Foundation case. It gives him a particular satisfaction to investigate Dora Skirth’s “disappearance.” Neither he nor Venom is surprised when one of her colleagues comes forward about her death at the orders of Carlton Drake. That particular expose blows up headlines—it doesn’t quite make the front page, but it does make the second, which is pretty fucking satisfying.

 

-

 

Anne calls them—well, him—every few days. It’s strange in a lot of ways: they were once closer to each other than they were to anyone else, and then abruptly they were nothing; six months of radio silence. To even be friends now is a bewildering gift—bittersweet, because Eddie still loves her, will probably always love her, and it’s been made blindingly apparent that he needs her so much more than she ever needed him. But that almost makes it better, in a way, that she wants him in her life at all, even after everything.

 

And so much worse, because even after everything, he’s still lying to her.

 

He isn’t sure, completely, why he can’t bring himself to tell her that Venom is alive. It’s especially unreasonable now that he’s positive she suspects something—Eddie’s decent at lying for his job, but he’s shit at lying to Annie. She knows him too well and he’s too open with her. This endeavor is doomed to fail, and the longer he puts off telling the truth, the worse it will be for this friendship they’re rebuilding when it inevitably comes out.

 

It isn’t even that Venom shares his reticence. Venom likes and trusts Anne; Venom wants her to know. (He also sees it as an important step in their plan to win her back; a plan which Eddie is currently ignoring.)

 

But for Eddie, Venom is a (badly kept, but still somewhat maintained) secret, and he can’t help but worry about what will happen when the secret gets out.

 

 _People fear what they don’t understand,_ Eddie tells Venom, trying to explain his fears. _They could hurt us._ He doesn’t voice that he’s more worried about what they would do to Venom than what they would do to him; he doesn’t know how to grapple with the fact that he cares more for the symbiote’s wellbeing than his own.

 

 **Anne wouldn’t hurt us,** Venom argues back. **She understands now.**

 

“Understands what?” Eddie asks, but Venom goes conspicuously silent on the matter.

 

In the end, something has to give—and that something was always going to be Eddie.

 

He and Anne agree to meet up again for coffee; she manages to coax him into the apartment this time by pointing out that it’s cold sitting on the front stoop in the winter, even in mild-weathered San Francisco. They’re sitting at the table, Eddie holding an unfamiliar mug, Mr. Belvedere avoiding him (which isn’t unusual or surprising, even without factoring in Venom’s presence lurking under Eddie’s skin). They’ve been talking about the case she’s building against the Life Foundation and where Eddie might fit into it, when she prompts, “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

 

He hesitates, and Venom, who is always close to the surface when they’re with Annie, demands, **Tell her!**

Eddie winces from the ferocity and the crushing realization that this is the moment, either way, from which there is no return.

 

He takes a breath.

 

The moment passes.

 

And he says, “Venom is alive.”

 

“I knew it!” Anne’s cheeks are pink, her eyes glittering with triumph. She’s unfairly beautiful.

 

 **“Hello, Anne,”** Venom says aloud, manifesting in miniature from Eddie’s shoulder.

 

Anne’s triumph fades into cautious warmth when she turns her head slightly to face Venom. “I’m pleased to see you alive and well,” she tells him. “I assume you’ve been keeping Eddie out of trouble?”

 

“Hey!” Eddie cuts in. “If anything, I keep _Venom_ out of trouble. He’s the one that wants to eat live fish in public!”

 

 **“Yes,”** Venom says, talking over Eddie’s outburst. **“But he is very good at finding trouble.”**

“You say that like you don’t encourage me to search out bad people for you to eat,!”

 

Anne begins to laugh. When Eddie turns his glare on her, she subsides to a smug smile. “I’ll pretend not to have heard that last part,” she says, and Eddie realizes, right, there’s honesty and then there’s making someone an unwilling accomplice to the murders you’re committing. “I’m very glad to see you’re getting along,” she continues.

 

Eddie would deny it—they do argue frequently, after all, over everything and nothing—but Anne knows that’s a fundamental aspect of Eddie’s relationships: being able to argue for arguing’s sake.

 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, feeling a pulse of warmth from Venom and sending one back. “Us too.”

 

There’s a moment of quiet that is abruptly shattered by the front door opening. Eddie turns to look and sees that, yes, it is Dan, who was supposed to be busy with a surgery but is instead here. Of course.

 

Venom must have sensed him coming and chosen not to retreat. Which means even _Venom_ likes Dan—really?! The last time Venom met the man, he’d tried to murder him, and now he trusts him?!

 

 **Anne trusts Dan,** Venom tells Eddie in through their bond. **He is… acceptable.**

 

From Venom, that’s practically a ringing endorsement. It doesn’t make Eddie feel any better.

 

“Hi Eddie,” Dan greets as he steps through the door and spies them at the table, a small smile gracing his features. “And Venom,” he continues, like it’s not a surprise, which confirms Eddie’s suspicion that telling Anne wouldn’t just mean telling Anne—she had her suspicions, and she shared them with Dan. Dan, who is a wonderful guy, but who Eddie does not know very well and isn’t sure he can trust. (At least, not with something as important as Venom’s safety.)

 

But Venom has decided to trust him either way, and he did wait until Eddie was ready to tell Anne, so Eddie grudgingly figures that in the spirit of compromise and body-sharing that this big decision was probably Venom’s to make.

 

“Hi Dan,” Eddie greets, as Dan drops his bag by the couch along with his jacket and then heads over to offer Eddie a handshake. Eddie accepts, because he’s not a (total) asshole. Venom, curiously, melts back into Eddie before Dan can figure out a way to shake his hand, too.

 

Dan turns to Anne, greeting her softly and giving her a brief kiss. Eddie’s insides twist up, but he doesn’t feel as wrecked as he expects to. It’s probably exposure to them together after staying with them, as well as the building acceptance that he fucked up what he had with Anne and there’s no going back.

 

“I’ll leave you to talk,” Dan says, glancing between them, that smile still on his face. “I’m going to go take a nap before I have to head back to the hospital for a late shift. Good to see you, Eddie, Venom; feel free to stop by more often.”

 

“Thanks,” Eddie says to Dan’s retreating form, a bit stunned by the sheer goodwill of a man who could so easily have chosen to hate or resent him, but has only ever been welcoming instead.

 

Anne is smirking into her cup of coffee, and Eddie doesn’t know what’s going through her mind, and he doesn’t want to know, either.

 

When Dan’s behind a wall and a closed door, Eddie leans in toward Anne and says quietly, “So, he knew then.”

 

She gives him a look that clearly communicates, _really?_ “Of course.”

 

“Right,” Eddie says, and gives in to the urge to sulk.

 

She rolls her eyes. “I had to explain my change in opinion about Venom after the hospital, much less yours, when it was clear that we were mourning when we thought he had died.”

 

That’s a good point, Eddie has to admit, except… “You were mourning?”

 

She rolls her eyes again. It’s got to be some kind of record, exasperating her this much, but then he’s always been good at that. “I may not have been a mess like you, but I bonded with Venom too,” she tells him, and he feels like an ass.

 

“I know,” he agrees quickly. “I just didn’t think…”

 

“Anyway, when I had my suspicions, I wasn’t going to keep them from Dan. He deserved to know and be free to make his mind up about Venom, after what he went through.”

 

Eddie winces. He feels _something_ from Venom through their bond, but it isn’t quite shame or regret. Maybe the closest he can come to putting words to the feeling is that Venom regrets that Dan had to come between them, but doesn’t regret the actions he took.

 

 **He wasn’t off limits,** Venom says petulantly in Eddie’s mind.

 

“What?” Eddie asks. Anne’s eyes start to narrow. “Not you,” he tells her quickly, before directing his focus inward once more.

 

**Anne was off limits. Dan wasn’t.**

_He’s off limits now,_ Eddie thinks, hoping the sentiment goes through—he’s never sure how many of his words get through when he tries to send thoughts back at Venom. It’s not like he has previous experience being telepathically bonded to an alien.

 

 **Obviously** is the only response that he gets.

 

Eddie rolls his eyes at the symbiote and focuses back on Anne, who is watching him with curiosity. He shrugs.

 

She lets it go, and the rest of their conversation strays back to safer topics. He leaves after another half an hour, begging off by saying he has work he should be doing, even if it’s just working off the clock from home.

 

“Take care of yourselves,” she says as she walks him outside.

 

Eddie can’t help but smile at her, warmed by Venom’s happiness at being acknowledged. “You too, Annie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first NaNoWriMo chapter for this fic! I'm really proud of how much I managed to write in pretty much just one day. It's not a huge update or anything, it's about average for this fic, but it was mostly handwritten while I volunteered at a conference, so I'm proud of it anyway. 
> 
> As always, many thanks to @kaoticalmanac for bouncing ideas and general beta-duties. This story is finally starting to take on a life of its own, so he had less to do this time, which I'm sure he appreciated, but his efforts are nonetheless instrumental to its production, because I'm never sure if anything I've written is good until it passes muster for him. 
> 
> Finally, feel free to come chat with me on tumblr @flowerparrish or stalk my #venom ot4 tag for updates about these nerds. And, as always, comment if you're enjoying it and if there's anything in particular you want to see and I'll try to work it in!


	5. this is how we have to try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom move into a new apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short Christmas/Holiday update as a thank you to everyone who believes in me and this story, and especially everyone who believed me that I hadn't abandoned it. Sorry for the wait, and I promise more to come--I've already started on the next chapter.  
> No beta, because my beta is off with his family for the holiday, but he did talk out the entire chapter with me months ago, so his assistance was nonetheless invaluable.

After a few months of steady work—Eddie never knew how grateful he’d be to have a steady job until he lost it; it was something he had once taken for granted, that there would always be work in some, any, capacity, available—Eddie has enough money saved up to start seriously applying for new leases (even excepting the sheer _amount_ of food Venom can consume).

 

His first thought is that it would be convenient to live near Anne and Dan; they spend on average about two days or nights a week with the couple, either at Anne and Dan’s house or out to various dinners or lunches. But that would be weird, moving to an apartment close to his ex and her new boyfriend, no matter how good of friends they’ve all become, so he dismisses that thought. Venom holds onto it for longer, because he doesn’t understand why it would be weird.

 

 **We like Anne and Dan,** Venom points out, trying to be reasonable and coming off slightly condescending.

 

“Just trust me,” Eddie eventually requests, and that makes Venom stop vocalizing objections, although Eddie can feel his Other’s dissatisfaction through their bond.

 

Other than that issue, Eddie takes Venom’s input and preferences as seriously as his own, although it does sometimes involve compromise. Eddie won’t live in a loft, no matter how upscale (not that they can afford the truly upscale anyway), because it reminds him of his shitty apartment and it makes him feel like he can’t afford something with rooms, like he hasn’t moved past that awful six months of his life after-Anne and before-Venom. Venom, however, likes open spaces, the freedom to move around while still connected to Eddie, to be with him but also do other things. They settle on looking for open floor plans, where the rooms are separate but bleed into one another, the kitchen with a small dining alcove bleeding into the living room with a corner for Eddie’s desk.

 

The other things that Venom wants that Eddie doesn’t necessarily agree on, per se, but acquiesces to on the grounds of making his Other happy, are to be high up and to have big windows. Eddie does enjoy the natural light, and he figures he can mostly train himself to ignore the view that Venom loves.

 

The place they find isn’t perfect; there’s some cracks in the ceiling and small pinholes in the walls, the kitchen tinier than Eddie would like and the bedroom barely fits a queen and a dresser, but the windows of the living area go almost from the floor to the ceiling, and the floors are hardwood, and the floor plan is a cross between the open space Venom prefers and the definite boundaries Eddie likes. Plus, there’s no bullet holes, which puts it league above their current home.

 

(It may not be _close_ to Anne and Dan, necessarily, but it also isn’t _far,_ and it’s absolutely the closest of the places they consider. Eddie pretends this is not a factor in their decision. Venom doesn’t.)

 

It’s at the higher end of their budget, and that makes Eddie a bit anxious, because he’s learned not to bank on continued success, but V likes the place too much for Eddie to say no.

 

They leave most of Eddie’s old furniture behind when they move, so the new place is largely barren. They go IKEA shopping, mostly for Eddie’s benefit as he’s amused by the idea of Venom doing something as human and mundane as shopping at IKEA, and they both get more invested than they need to in patterns and color schemes and bedding and rugs. They compromise, again, by each picking things they like, ignoring if they horribly clash, and when it’s all been delivered, assembled, and situated, it looks… like a fucking mess.

 

Eddie loves it.

 

So they have a kitchen and the bare minimum of kitchen appliances, because they’re still eating more chocolate and tater tots than, say, Dan might advise, and they have a couch and a small living room table, a tiny dining room table that fits into the alcove and seats four (this gives Venom a great degree of satisfaction), a work area for Eddie when he gets fixated on a case or needs to work from home, a TV that is not grand but is decent enough, a bed with a not-quite-comfortable mattress, a dresser that is secondhand and scratched but functional, and… not much else. It’s maybe the minimum, and nothing matches anything else, but everything is _theirs,_ symbolic of this life that they’re building together, and Eddie kind of loves it.

 

Okay, he _really_ loves it.

 

So they move with a little bit of work and very little fanfare, but sometimes it feels like something is… missing. Eddie would think about it, figure out what could be wrong, except he’s so busy with work and then Venom in his free time that he doesn’t have much of a chance.

 

Venom, who has nothing to do during the day except watch Eddie work, and more often than not finds that exceedingly boring, is the one to pin down the problem. He spends his days watching TV, either on screen from home or surreptitiously on Eddie’s phone at work, and he scours the internet researching all the weird human customs that are second nature to Eddie, that he wouldn’t think to explain, and he comes up with the answer.

 

 **We should have Anne and Dan over for dinner,** Venom tells Eddie.

 

“Why?” Eddie asks. He’s not _opposed_ to the idea, except how he kind of is. He likes their space, and part of that is that it’s _theirs,_ and if they let other people in, it will be less exclusive and will open them up to other people’s opinions on how they live their life. Even if those people are Anne and Dan, Eddie doesn’t find the idea of being judged appealing.

 

 **They are your friends,** Venom tells him.

 

“Our friends,” Eddie corrects, because they've proven that, and Eddie can feel how much Venom likes them in return.

 

 **Human culture dictates that there must be a “house-warming” party,** Venom tells him, ignoring his statement.

 

Eddie knows Venom is right. Even if it wasn’t culturally significant, it is unfair that he spends so much time at Anne’s place and never has the couple over to theirs. It made sense, which he still lived in a shithole, but now that his place is decent, it’s impolite not to extend a reciprocal invitation. Anne and Dan have allowed Eddie and Venom a place in their lives where neither of them fully deserved such warmth and openness; Eddie knows he needs to get over his hesitation and invite them to come to dinner.

 

It takes him a few days, filled with Venom’s prodding and threats to just invite them anyway, but eventually he does.

 

They come on a Saturday night—Thursday is their date night, and Friday Eddie has work—bringing wine and a plant that Eddie hopes he won’t kill like his last one.

 

The way they look around at all the mismatched and secondhand furniture makes Eddie feel itchy, but Anne gives him a smile and Dan compliments the living room rug—bright red, Venom’s choice—and it’s okay. Dinner is nothing fancy, because it’s Eddie cooking, but the pasta is good and the wine is better, and they spend a relaxed evening in each other’s company.

 

By the time they leave, Eddie is no longer sure what he feared in the first place; Annie and Dan fit so effortlessly into his and Venom’s space that it’s like they belong there.

 

 **Yes,** Venom agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but hopefully sweet and soft. 
> 
> Next chapter the rating will increase btw. Preview: 
> 
> The first time Eddie and Venom have sex, it takes him by surprise. 
> 
> It really shouldn’t. But it does.


	6. I feel like I'm drowning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Eddie and Venom have sex, it takes him by surprise. 
> 
> It really shouldn’t. But it does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Symbrock Becomes Official Chapter. As teased, it is mostly smut.  
> If you want to avoid the explicit content, just skip the chapter and move on knowing that Eddie and Venom are goo boyfriends now.
> 
> (Also, minor dubcon warning, in that Venom is an alien that doesn't know about consent standards but also like, nothing nonconsensual happens and Venom does start asking before doing once Eddie brings it up.)

The first time Eddie and Venom have sex, it takes him by surprise.

 

It really shouldn’t. But it does.

 

He should even have anticipated that it would happen _in this moment,_ because it happens when he’s jerking off in the shower. But, c’mon, he wasn’t going to go the rest of his life without jerking off, and when Venom didn’t react the first time he did it, he just… kept doing it.

 

He hadn’t thought ahead to how he would explain sex to Venom—he hadn’t really had any impulse to sleep with anyone, which wasn’t wholly unusual for Eddie, being more demisexual than anything—and for now this was just… something he did, every few days, both to take the edge off and because it felt good.

 

So he _isn’t_ expecting it when Venom, more present in his mind—not that he’d noticed through the haze of lazy pleasure—snaked out a tendril and wrapped it around Eddie’s cock alongside his hand.

 

Eddie froze. “Um, what?” he asked, trying to reengage his brain enough to figure out how to explain that this was…

 

What even _was_ this?

 

 **Yes, Eddie?** Venom asks, mischief washing across their bond as the tendril wrapped around the head of his cock flicks over it, and then slips down to engulf it, pulling, and, _oh._

 

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes out, and then, “wait, V, wait a second.”

 

Venom stops immediately, although Eddie can feel his confusion.

 

Eddie leans against the wall, his forehead against the cool tile as if it will give him some sort of clarity, as if it will give him the ability to deal with this… situation.

 

“You gotta ask, V,” is what he says, and that’s not the root of the issue, but it is also something Eddie is sure of in this mess of things he isn’t sure of, so maybe it’s not the worst starting point.

 

 **Why?** Venom asks. Eddie can feel Venom’s _intent,_ not quite sexual arousal but not quite not, either, and it’s making it hard to think. **I can feel what you like. What you want.**

Eddie tries to think of how to explain consent to an alien who doesn’t always understand human norms. “It shows that you respect the person enough to listen to them, even when you know what they want,” he says after a minute, because that might be the closest he’ll come to an explanation that Venom can accept.

 

He feels Venom considering. **Okay,** Venom decides, although he doesn’t sound convinced. **May I?**

That’s the real question, isn’t it.

 

Is Eddie about to allow his Other half, who is nonetheless an alien entity, for all that they’re a _we_ most of the time, jack him off in the shower? How will he be able to look at himself if this happens? How will he be able to face Annie? Dan?

 

But, fuck, a part of him _wants_ this. This closeness. This extension of what they already have.

 

It’s that thought that makes him pause. Because an easy way to explain to Venom that Eddie doesn’t want to have sex with him would be to explain his sexuality—that he’s demisexual and isn’t attracted to people that he doesn’t already have a romantic connection with.

 

But he _is_ sexually into this, sex, with Venom. So what does that mean?

 

He thinks back over the last few months, building a life together with Venom, spending every moment wrapped up in each other, and he thinks, _oh,_ again. He’s more committed to Venom than he’s ever been to anyone—even Anne—and it scares and exhilarates him all at once.

 

 _Fuck,_ he thinks, and then he says, “Okay, V, just—slow.”

 

Venom’s tendril wraps around his cock again from where it had been hovering just inches away, and it pulses obscenely, drawing a wrecked groan from deep within Eddie’s throat. The tendril tugs, achingly slowly, and Eddie can feel Venom’s pleasure each time his body responds to some new sensation. That it just makes everything better is weird, that he would be into sharing his mental space with his sexual partner is something, but he doesn’t want to think about it right now, so he won’t.

 

Venom speeds up the pace incrementally and yet just enough to make Eddie’s knees weak—maybe they should have taken this somewhere he’s not as likely to hurt himself if he falls, but then, it’s not like Venom can’t fix any accidental damage he does to himself.

 

More tendrils manifest, stroking across his arms and chest, his inner thigh, just the tips of tendrils ghosting across his skin and giving him goosebumps. It’s not anything he’d ever thought he would find sexy, necessarily—Eddie’s fine with gentle sex, yeah, but he also _really fucking likes_ rougher sex, and this is something so very different from that. This is like being _worshipped,_ and it’s driving him a little bit crazy. Eddie knows he’s handsome enough, but he also knows he can be a disaster, and it’s not like Venom’s seen him at his best as often as he’s seen him at his worst.

 

But he can feel the intent behind Venom’s actions, and it screams desire and affection and—

 

And things Eddie isn’t going to think about, not right this second, when one of Venom’s tendrils tweaks across one of his nipples and the resulting electric current of _want_ tears through him, making his knees give out. He expects to fall, but Venom’s there, supporting him, holding him up, and it’s—

 

It’s too much, it’s too _good,_ Eddie’s going to _die_ if this continues—

 

He comes and he doesn’t do anything as dramatic as black out, but his mind does empty to make room for the rush of pleasure that fills him and he floats hazily in it for a few moments until he regains his equilibrium.

 

The water in the shower is what brings him back to himself; the sensation of droplets hitting his oversensitive skin is a contrast to the ghostly remnant of feeling of Venom’s tendrils sliding across him, and it grounds him once more.

 

“Fuck,” he says out loud, and Venom doesn’t respond, necessarily, but Eddie can feel his satisfaction through their bond.

 

Eddie washes himself clean once more and shuts off the spray, climbing out and wandering his apartment in search of a towel as he’d forgotten to grab one before he started his shower.

 

He pulls on a probably clean pair of boxer-briefs and collapses back on the bed, his skin still feeling too warm from the water and his nerves still electric.

 

“Where did that come from, V?” he asks after a moment.

 

Venom’s face manifests above him, all teeth and tongue and grinning. **“It is what humans do,”** Venom says. Eddie can sense that there’s more that Venom is withholding, but he’s willing to start there and work up to it if that’s what Venom needs.

 

“Sometimes,” Eddie agrees slowly. “Not always, though. And I don’t…” How does he explain his revelation to someone who can see inside his head but has a less than firm grasp of human social conventions? “I only do that with people I’m close to,” he decides eventually.

 

 **“We’re close,”** Venom states. It isn’t a question… but it isn’t not a question, either.

 

“Yeah, we are,” Eddie agrees. “But it sort of… surprised me anyway.” He doesn’t know how to have the “what are we” relationship talk with an alien. Hell, he’s bad at having it with humans; with Annie, she called him her boyfriend after a couple months of serious dating and he just rolled with it. But in this instance, he really _needs_ to define what they are to each other, because it’s… so weird and unfathomable at the best of times. Great, of course, but… weird. “I… like you,” Eddie says, because Venom might or might not know that it’s too soon to say _love,_ but Eddie does know it and he’s not risking that.

 

 **“I like you, Eddie,”** Venom says, which is a big deal because Venom almost never refers to himself in the singular, so then of course he snarks, **“we’ve been over this.”**

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, we have. But I like you like I liked Anne.”

 

**“You still like Anne.”**

“Not the important part of that sentence, V.”

 

Venom hums, an alien sound and nonetheless comforting to Eddie. Fuck, how had he not realized this sooner?

 

Only him, he figures. Only he would fall in love with his alien symbiote Other half.

 

 **“I like you, Eddie,”** Venom repeats, and this time there’s some of that _intent_ behind the words. It makes Eddie want to squirm; it makes his cock perk up in interest, even though it’s only been like ten minutes since he got off.

 

“Oh,” Eddie says intelligibly. “Is that why?”

 

Venom doesn’t reply to that, instead tilting his head and saying, “Again, Eddie?” Eddie would be offended by the question, defensive, but V sounds excited by the prospect.

 

“Maybe not just yet,” he says, even though he’s pretty sure his real answer is _yes._ “Hey, V, what are we?”

 

 **“We are Venom,”** V replies easily.

 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, pretending that statement didn’t get him going a little bit too, and oh, God, no, if he develops a Pavlovian response to that they’re going to have a problem. “But our relationship?”

 

Venom’s head bobs up a down, not a nod but more of a shrug. **“We are whatever we want to be,”** Venom says, like it’s that easy.

 

It can’t be that easy. At least, not for Eddie. Annie always said he likes making things difficult, after all.

 

“Okay, but what do you want our relationship to be?”

 

 **“Eddie,”** Venom says, and Eddie can sense exasperation. **“I like being us. I like doing this,”** and Venom leans down to lick across Eddie’s half-hard cock and wrap his tongue around it, tugging gently as he lets go, making all the air abruptly abandon Eddie’s lungs as his stomach swoops like he’s on a roller coaster, “ **and I like you.”**

 

Eddie can sense that he’s not going to get much further than that, but he’s always been good at pushing his luck. “So we’re… dating,” he hedges.

 

Venom laughs at him, not aloud but in their minds. It’s almost mean, but it’s also happy; it’s Venom thinking that Eddie’s a idiot, yes, but that Eddie is _his_ idiot, so it’s okay. **“What do you call what we have been doing?”**

 

Eddie considers that. They eat together, they sleep together, they wake up together, they go places together, they talk constantly… “So that’s a yes?”

 

Venom’s head dips so his absurdly huge teeth can scrape across Eddie’s jaw and neck, making him shiver in a way that’s more sexual than afraid but a little bit of both. It’s perfect. **“Yes, Eddie,”** Venom says. **“Now?”**

Eddie cups a hand around the side of Venom’s head and nods. “Yeah,” he agrees.

 

With that one word, Venom is _everywhere,_ except the one place Eddie would really enjoy. It’s so much sensation all at once that his hands fist in the sheets below him, nails digging into his palms even through the (admittedly thin) barrier.

 

He can feel Venom question through his memories for what to do, and Eddie allows him, although he’s not sure they really need to take it to another level—this is already _a lot._

 

Then Venom stops, satisfied, and there’s a tendril circling Eddie’s asshole, and he thinks, _oh._

 

“You gotta ask, V,” he reminds, sounding breathless but not quite wrecked yet, and feels Venom’s satisfaction rush between them.

 

 **“Do you want this?”** Venom asks, knowing the answer already. Eddie can tell V is humoring him, but that’s okay. They’ll work on consent more later. It’s not like they’re planning on sleeping with anyone else, after all, and V is right that he can see inside Eddie’s head.

 

“Yes,” he admits, because he hasn’t been fucked in… God, so long. Too long. “Please,” he adds, because Venom’s tendril has yet to breach his hole, and it’s driving him inside circling around the outside.

 

Then it’s slipping in, naturally slick in a way that should make Eddie feel disgusted but instead just seems convenient, and for the millionth fucking time today Eddie’s breath punches out of his chest. “Fuck, yes,” he breathes, as Venom _keeps pushing in._ He feels possibly more full than he’s ever felt.

 

Venom stops—somewhere, probably in Eddie’s memories, it seems he’s learn to give Eddie a moment to adjust to the intrustion—but tendrils tweak across his nipples again and he cries out at the feeling. “Move, please move,” he begs shamelessly, because it’s nothing V can’t tell he wants anyway through their bond. There’s no need for shame between them, no need to think about what V is thinking, feeling, in this moment, because it’s all there between them. There’s no need to wonder; Eddie is free to sink into the certainty of _them_ and enjoy this.

 

Venom moves.

 

It’s possibly the best thing he’s ever felt—okay, so maybe Eddie thinks that every time he has sex with someone he loves, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true _every time,_ this time especially—and it’s too much and not enough. He reaches down for his cock, desperate for relief, and a tendril snakes out and grabs hold of his wrist, pinning in down at his side.

 

He cries out, arching up, so hard he can barely stand it, because _this_ hits all of his buttons in just the right way. “V, please, let me,” he begs, not quite nonsensical but close, knowing as he says it that it’s not what he actually wants, knowing _Venom_ knows that and won’t let him go.

 

Eddie knows that if he were to say _no_ and mean it Venom would stop. He’s also aware in some distant part of his mind that they probably need a safe word, which means he’s going to have to explain the concept of safe words to Venom, but right now he knows he’s safe and that’s enough for him to submit to this.

 

He reaches out with his free arm in part because he’d _really_ like some friction on his cock, is pretty sure he could come undone and have the best orgasm of his life if he could just touch himself for a few moments, but he also reaches out in part because he knows that Venom will pin that arm down as well. When it hits the bed and doesn’t give even as he pulls against it—and fuck, Eddie’s not weak, but he knows how much stronger than him Venom is, and he can admit that he’s attracted to powerful people—and Eddie wants to come so bad that he feels like his entire body is on fire.

 

He’s also pretty sure that at some point the tentacle in his ass got bigger, because he still feels like he’s being split open and it’s been far too long for him to not have adjusted. It burns, and the slide of it is amazing, and then Venom hits his prostate and Eddie sees stars for a few seconds. “Fuck, V, there,” he murmurs, and Venom complies, hitting unerringly accurate on every slide in, stretching him wider each time.

 

He becomes aware, distantly, that he’s crying, probably because he’s so overwhelmed. V is still touching him _everywhere_ except his cock—and, he distantly notes, his mouth, although as soon as he notes that there’s a tendril caressing across his lips.

 

 **“Yes?”** V asks.

 

“Yeah,” Eddie bites out, and Venom’s newest tendril slips inside his mouth. He sucks and it gives him something to ground himself, the taste of V metallic and foreign and somehow also _just right,_ and the tentacle thickens until it feels like he’s both sucking a cock and getting fucked by one.

 

The final straw is when he pictures what he must look like, Venom’s alien nightmare face that he finds inexplicably comforting hovering above him, tentacles wrapped around him and stroking across every part of his skin, fucking into him in multiple places. It’s obscene and amazing and Eddie comes.

 

This time he does black out for a few moments. Venom has mostly retreated by the time he comes to, but there’s a tentacle wrapped around his waist and V’s face is still hovering above his, watching him like he’s fascinated by what he sees.

 

“Fuck,” Eddie groans, working his jaw, which is just the tiniest bit sore. “That was…” He tries to think of a halfway decent descriptor, fails, and shakes his head. “That was something,” he finishes.

 

 **“Something good,”** Venom says, and it isn’t a question but rather a statement that V is very proud of. **“You make good chemicals when we do this,”** he adds casually.

 

Eddie throws a weak arm over his face and laughs. “V, are you stealing my afterglow?”

 

 **“You’re lucky I don’t snack on anything else,”** Venom grumbles, but it’s all teasing. If they’re going to be having sex this good, V should get something out of it too.

 

“I love you,” Eddie mumbles, and it takes him a moment to realize what he’s said, but then he freezes, formerly loose muscles going tense.

 

“ **Love you too, Eddie,”** Venom says back before fading into Eddie once more, just a tendril wrapped around him for post-sex cuddles.

 

Eddie basks in the joy of this new thing he’s got going on, this inexplicably good thing he’s stumbled into, and then he freezes again.

 

Oh God, what will Annie say when he tells her?

 

He groans and rolls over onto his stomach, wincing at the mess in his underwear. Whatever, he’ll deal with that later. Right now, he’s going to nap.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is like my second time writing sex in literal years, so like... hope it was okay?? As always lmk what you think in the comments and also let me know if there's any particular direction you're hoping this story will go (no promises, but it's fairly open ended rn).  
> And sorry for the lack of Anne&Dan content this chapter, but it just felt like establishing Eddie/Venom first was the right move.


	7. gentle earthquakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Anne have a brunch date, and Eddie realizes that if he wants them to be close, he has to open up. It's awkward, but also good.

Eddie has the irrational fear that _everyone knows._ He knows it’s irrational because next to no one knows about Venom, so no one can know about the sex they are now regularly having. But he’s got that weird shame feeling in his gut even though consciously he’s _not_ ashamed of it, the one where he knows other people wouldn’t understand and would most certainly judge. God, it feels almost like internalized homophobia, and he’d gotten over that ages ago, so he doesn’t particularly like this backslide into shame-filled self-consciousness.

 

He can shrug it off, most of the time, with the assurance that no one else has any way of knowing.

 

It is not that easy when he’s at brunch with Anne a little over a week later. He hasn’t seen she or Dan in the intervening time, all of their schedules too crazy for them to find time to meet up, and Dan is still busy but Eddie and Anne have a miraculous Sunday partly free and agree to brunch.

 

Eddie doesn’t feel fancy enough for brunch, even though God knows he and Anne used to do brunch and he never cared much about his appearance then. Sometimes he misses the easy confidence he used to have, and sometimes he thinks maybe he’s a better person without it. He’s never one hundred percent sure.

 

But Anne’s busy again this afternoon, and Eddie didn’t finish writing until after midnight last night, so brunch it is.

 

He orders the biggest plate of food he can just to make Venom happy, and then he tries to focus on what Annie’s saying, talking about her busy week and the Life Foundation case and a million other things he really _does_ care about, but. Well.

 

He’s got that feeling again, where he’s sure she _must_ know even though there’s no reason she would, and he’s too distracted in his own head and the mess of his emotions to pay enough attention.

 

“What’s wrong?” she finally asks, before their food has even come.

 

Eddie winces. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, and it comes out sounding like a lie. “Really, nothing’s wrong,” he tries again, and this time it sounds a little bit better.

 

She gives him a disparaging look that tells him exactly how little she buys his lie. But, weirdly, she drops it, albeit very pointedly, picking up the threads of the previous conversation and asking about his work.

 

He answers, half his mind still reeling with confusion and conversational whiplash, and thinks about the fact that this is probably just a product of the fact that they’re friends now, not best friends or more than friends, and maybe the level of friends they are—or Anne perceives them to be—means that they won’t or shouldn’t harass each other to talk about things they’re withholding.

 

Eddie comes to the realization that he doesn’t _want_ that kind of friendship with Anne. He’ll take what he can get, of course he will, but he wants to be able to tell her things, important things, and he wants her to feel like she can push him to open up.

 

He isn’t sure how to achieve that, necessarily, or communicate it, but he latches on to the idea that maybe he has to open up first so that she knows he trusts her or something, and he blurts out, in the middle of her talking about something he’s once again not listening to, “V and I had sex.”

 

She goes quiet. Her mimosa is hovering near her mouth, and after a moment she puts it back down on the table. The glass makes a quiet _clink_ in the silence—because _that_ kind of silence has descended.

 

Eddie reflects on the fact that he’s an _idiot._

 

He doesn’t want to keep looking at Anne, to see her reactions telegraphed across her face, but he also can’t look away. At least Annie’s always nice to look at, even when the slightest shift of expression on her face has the ability of eviscerating him.

 

But then she… laughs?

 

“I’m serious,” he says quietly, a little (lot) confused and a little annoyed.

 

“Oh, I know,” she says, waving a hand at him. “I’m just surprised it took this long for you to get there, that’s all.” Her eyes narrow. “Unless this isn’t a recent development?”

 

She appears to have gotten the memo that they are secret-sharing friends, if she’s gone from respecting his boundaries to being annoyed that he might not have shared this development with her immediately.

 

“Nope,” he hastens to reassure her. “It’s… very recent.” He spies their waiter headed over with their food and takes a moment to try to collect himself from the way his emotions have been tossed about like the sea in a storm the last few minutes.

 

**EAT,** Venom insists as the food is placed in front of them and Eddie doesn’t _immediately_ begin.

 

He rolls his eyes. _I’m having an important conversation,_ he points out.

 

Venom doesn’t respond, but he feels the other’s ambivalence.

 

_V?_ he prompts.

 

Venom gives the mental equivalent of a put-upon sigh. **Food is more important. We know Anne likes us.**

It’s a surprisingly good argument, if lacking in the nuances of human social mores and how they can impact people’s attitudes toward one another. Eddie wonders if maybe he should have trusted Anne more, believed that she wouldn’t react poorly.

 

But then he reminds himself that she was just told by her ex-fiancé that he’s having sex with his alien counterpart, and he decides she’s pretty free to react however she likes.

 

He takes a huge bite of his avocado toast—he’s a millennial, damnit, and he’ll eat what he wants—to appease Venom.

 

“What’s it like?” Anne asks, finally taking that sip of her mimosa and staring at him over the rim with sparkling eyes. He chokes on his food before hurriedly swallowing.

 

“Um,” he says eloquently, because. What the fuck. But Annie’s happy, and he’s happy that she’s not being weird about it, so he says, “It’s. Um, it’s really good.” His brain does not fail to provide him with memories of _exactly_ how good it is, and he feels Venom’s interest. But, well. Secret alien sex in public is something he’s definitely not ready for, so, no. That’s not happening. Also, especially not in front of Anne.

 

He can tell that Venom’s even more interested in the idea of everything Eddie’s thinking about, and it’s definitely just some kind of bleed over that means he’s feeling interested, too, underneath the overwhelming _oh god no_ of it. Nevermind that he can always tell which feels are his and which are Venom’s and which are theirs combined.

 

Nope.

 

“I’m happy for you,” Anne tells him. “You’re good together.”

 

It hurts, a little, to be discussing this with Annie, because a part of him will always love her. But he’s happy for himself, too. He likes what he has with V. “Thanks,” he says.

 

She picks up his silent cue that he’s very done talking about this and their conversation moves on to some movie she and Dan watched on TV recently. Eddie can focus again, and it’s nice to chat and catch up, especially with Venom providing commentary in his head.

 

“We should meet up again soon,” he says when they’re done, before they go their separate ways. “When are you and Dan free?”

 

It’s weird, that hanging out without Dan has started to feel as wrong as hanging out somewhere that Venom can’t manifest and be a part of things.

 

“I’ll check with him and text you,” Anne promises, “so long as you’re done avoiding us now.”

 

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Eddie protests (lies).

 

She shakes her head and laughs at him. “I’ll see you soon.” She gives him a hug and then she’s gone, walking down the street away from him. It leaves him feeling slightly bereft, not knowing when he’ll see her next, but also lucky, knowing that whenever it is, it’s guaranteed to be soon.

 

“Let’s go home,” Eddie says to Venom.

 

It’s the first time a place has felt like home since he lived with Annie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who remains interested despite sporadic updates and has faith in this story, especially everyone who leaves me such wonderful comments. I want to think I'd finish this story for my own sake, but without the accountability of knowing people are reading it and invested in it, I'd probably get tired of putting in the effort. 
> 
> I hope this chapter worked the way I wanted it to? It's so hard to balance Anne and Eddie moving on in relationships but still caring about each other enough for the OT4 to eventually, y'know, be a thing. But I think overall they need to learn to be apart so that they can choose to be together again. 
> 
> I'm planning on including some Dan next chapter, because I sure miss my man Dan, it's been an age since he's been in this fic.


	8. you must like me for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie (and Venom) and Dan go out for drinks. They bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I agonized over this for ages, and then I sat down and pretty much wrote it all in one go. Funny how that goes sometimes.

Eddie’s relationship with Dan isn’t the same as his relationship with Annie. There isn’t the same necessary closeness that comes from having been as intimate with someone as he’s been with Annie, even if things are different now, and they haven’t spent enough time together to have established what Eddie would consider a close friendship.

 

That’s kind of how Eddie rolls, though. He likes to be friends with everyone, but he’s always been okay having only one or two close people in his life. And yeah, that kind of backfired on him when everything with that asshole Carlton Drake went down…so maybe it’s time to shake things up a little. He’s got Annie and he’s got Venom, the two most important people in his life, but he’s also got Mrs. Chen and Dan who are probably genuinely his friends, not just acquaintances passing through his life without making a strong mark.

 

Eddie knows making attachments with people is healthy, and necessary, and all of that shit.

 

He also knows it may not be the _best_ idea to become friends with his ex’s new boyfriend, however awesome the guy might be. But Eddie doesn’t _like_ a lot of people enough to be close with them, and he genuinely likes being around Dan.

 

All of this means that when Dan invites him out for drinks one night after work, when Anne’s busy with a case and Eddie has just wrapped up an investigation and subsequent story piece, he says yes. He’s got money to spare on things like drinks with a friend these days (not that he wasn’t spending money on drinks when he didn’t have the money to spare, anyway—he’s actually drinking less now that he can afford to drink more) and the fact that Dan’s extended the invitation to hang out without Annie around as a buffer makes Eddie feel warm. Important.

 

Usually the only person making Eddie feel capital i Important these days is Venom, who still has reservations about Dan sometimes, although they do seem to be fading.

 

They meet up at a bar halfway in between their respective apartments, one Eddie hasn’t been to before. It’s trendier than the kind of bar Eddie frequents—he tends toward dives—but not so hipster-oriented that he hates it. Everything is warm and polished wood and wrought iron and red brick, and Eddie can get behind the vibe the place is giving.

 

Dan’s dressed down, or at least as dressed down as he gets, in faded jeans and a pale green button up shirt, looking one hundred percent like the kind of guy whose number Eddie might try for if this were any other person at any other point in his life.

 

Now, he just hopes he doesn’t look too trashy in comparison in his leather jacket that’s just this side of too warm for the weather, faded band t-shirt, and torn up jeans.

 

“Eddie!” Dan greets, standing from the booth he’s saved for them to give Eddie a warm hug. Eddie loves that about Dan; where most guys go for arms-length shoulder pats, especially with their queer friends, Dan’s never been afraid of a hug. And Eddie _knows_ Dan knows about his sexuality, because Annie’s teased him about some of his old boyfriends enough when the three of them are together.

 

“Hi Dan,” Eddie greets, hugging him back for a moment before sprawling into the booth. “I’m _starving,”_ he continues, snagging the menu and pouring over it. How much can he get away with eating? He could order enough wings for the both of them and then eat them all himself, maybe… and the thought reminds him to glance up at Dan’s amused smile and ask, “Have you eaten?”

 

“I had a sandwich a couple of hours ago,” Dan says, as if that’s an answer. Maybe it would be, if Eddie could even clearly remember what it was like not eating for two—and ew, weird thought, that makes him sound pregnant.

 

“I’m ordering so many wings,” Eddie decides. “You’re welcome to share.”

 

“Maybe, if Venom promises not to fight me over them,” Dan replies. “I could use a drink more than anything right now.”

 

As if summoned by that thought, the waitress appears, looking a little bit frazzled and with a smile plastered on her face that is at least 90% fake. They order—IPA for Dan, which Eddie can’t help but tease him for, and cheap beer for Eddie because he knows he’s trash, along with _all the wings—_ and she departs with only the smallest of nods, mind already on her next task.

 

**Can we eat her?** Venom asks.

 

_No,_ Eddie says. He could say, _she’s just busy,_ but instead he says, _Then who would bring us our food?_

They both know she would make a better meal—Eddie has accepted, by now, that nothing except _maybe_ chocolate will satisfy them quite like eating people—but Venom acquiesces, and Eddie refocuses on Dan.

 

“Sorry, that must be annoying,” Eddie says.

 

“What must be?”

 

“The whole me losing focus because I’m having a conversation in my head thing.”

 

Dan looks contemplative. He doesn’t answer for a moment, and Eddie likes that Dan isn’t the kind of person to instantly and non-genuinely reassure him.

 

“I personally don’t find it annoying,” Dan says after a bit. “I do often wonder what you’re both saying, but I also respect your privacy and know you’ll share if you want to. I do prefer when we’re all somewhere that Venom can join in the conversation on his own, though.”

 

Venom hadn’t been paying attention until his name was mentioned, but he’s listening now. He’s clearly surprised, because despite Eddie saying it, Venom still doesn’t believe that Anne and Dan are his friends, too.

 

“We like that too,” Eddie says after a moment of waiting to see if Venom has something to say. “But sometimes it’s nice to hang out like this, too.”

 

Dan nods. “I can imagine. Thanks, by the way, for coming out with me.”

 

Eddie can’t help but tilt his head a bit. “Why wouldn’t I?”

 

Dan shrugs. “I don’t know a lot of people in your position who would want to hang out with me,” he says, and it’s true—even Eddie frequently questions his growing attachment to his ex’s new man—but it’s also indicative of a kind of self-deprecation that Eddie wouldn’t have thought Dan suffered from.

 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a lot of friends,” Eddie says, and knows his mouth has run away with him as said the wrong thing before the words have even finished being spoken, “but also I like spending time with you.”

 

Dan smiles, small but real. “Thanks.”

 

Their beers are dropped on the table in front of them before the moment has time to get awkward, and Eddie gratefully takes a sip of his.

 

**Drinking is bad for us, Eddie,** Venom chides, but he hadn’t protested Eddie’s plans to meet up with Dan here, so Eddie isn’t too concerned.

 

_You can fix the damage,_ Eddie points out.

 

**Doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to damage us.**

_You get us stabbed_ all the time, Eddie fires back. He’s grinning into his beer at the petty argument, both because he’s winning and because he likes bickering with V.

 

“There’s no way your crappy beer is that good,” Dan comments, eyes curious.

 

Eddie turns his grin on Dan and his shitty dry humor. “Just arguing with Venom about whether it’s irresponsible to damage my liver if I have a symbiote to fix me.”

 

Dan’s eyes sharpen in interest the way they always do when Venom’s ability to manipulate and heal human anatomy comes up, but instead of pursuing that topic, Dan says, “Who’s winning?”

 

“Me,” Eddie says, at the same time as Venom says **Me** in their head. Eddie laughs softly.

 

“I get the feeling you’re not both in agreement on that,” Dan says.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie shoots back with a wink. He’s just… so happy, here, with a friend and his Other, and he can’t even blame it on the beer, because he’s only had a few swallows and it’s not like it’s got a high alcohol content.

 

Dan’s actually down more of his beer than Eddie, but not by much. His cheeks are pink, so he must be warm, because Eddie knows by now that Dan’s alcohol tolerance isn’t great but it isn’t terrible either. He doesn’t drink enough to have built it up, but he’s not a small man by any means.

 

“I hear congratulations are in order, by the way,” Dan says, and it takes Eddie a moment to process the words and then parse their meaning.

 

“Oh,” he says after a minute. “Yeah. Uh, thanks.” He’s positive he’s pink right now; it’s just, when his mind goes to his relationship with Venom, it goes to some very not safe for work places, and he doesn’t know how much Dan knows or suspects but he bets Dan has a good idea of what those places are now, based on whatever expression is on Eddie’s face.

 

“You’re welcome,” Dan replies, and then mercifully changes the subject. “You mentioned you just finished a piece; care to share, or do I have to wait for it to come out like all of your other fans?”

 

Eddie grins, remembering that awkward moment when Dan mentioned that he liked Eddie’s work and Annie looked like she was going to bite his head off. It’s a memory from a bad time, but of good people, and it doesn’t hurt him much anymore, now that he’s come so far from the misery of that moment. “I guess I can share a few hints,” he allows, and launches into as much of the story as he feels he can share ahead of the printed piece.

 

Eddie loses track of time and Venom lets him, lulled to contentment by the sheer enormity of the amount of wings they consume (although they do allow Dan a few), Eddie and Dan going back and forth with innocuous stories of drunken stupidity in their youth, present day work, and (once they’re drunk enough) talking a little about Annie.

 

By the time Eddie thinks to glance down at his watch, it’s quarter to eleven and he curses quietly, more out of surprise than upset. “Annie’s going to have my balls for keeping you out so late,” he says casually.

 

Dan laughs. He’s drunker than Eddie by a fair bit. “She’ll be glad we’re bonding,” he says, too earnest because he’s too inebriated to know better.

 

Eddie winces but nods. “I guess you’re an okay guy,” he says, a massive understatement. If he and Dan weren’t what Eddie would consider close friends before, they definitely are now. Only Eddie’s closest friends know about the time he threw up in his roommate’s closet in undergrad because he thought it was the bathroom, after all.

 

They split the bill and head toward the door, but Eddie stops short of parting ways outside. The cool night air has his head a little clearer, and he glances down the street before turning to Dan. “We’re gonna walk you home,” he decides.

 

“I’m fine,” Dan says, but his first step toward his place is more a stagger than a step, and Eddie’s decision solidifies. Venom, stirring to full awareness, agrees. **He looks like prey,** Venom comments, and Eddie kind of has to agree.

 

“Well, yeah, but I should apologize to Annie in person for stealing her boyfriend for the night and returning him drunk.” He tries to sound as reasonable as possible so Dan won’t think to argue.

 

“Okay,” Dan allows after a moment. “In that case, I’m gonna lean on you.”

 

“You betcha,” Eddie agrees, hauling Dan’s arm over his shoulder.

 

It doesn’t take them long to get to Dan and Annie’s place, and Eddie isn’t even slightly tired, because he’s got Venom’s strength coursing through him and keeping him steady as he supports Dan’s weight.

 

“Keys,” Eddie says, nudging Dan. Dan pats at his pockets helplessly for a few moments before Eddie gives up on that. He knocks, instead, trying not to be too loud.

 

Annie opens the door half a minute later, just when Eddie’s contemplating if digging in Dan’s pockets himself is crossing a line, and relief courses through him.

 

She studies them for a moment before narrowing her eyes at Eddie. “You got my boyfriend drunk,” she states, a fact rather than a question.

 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees.

 

“Hm.” She looks them over once more. “Good,” she decides. “Help me get him upstairs.”

 

Coaxing Dan up the stairs—or rather, mostly carrying him, because he’s apparently become a sleepy drunk after standing still for a few minutes—is difficult only because of how narrow the staircase is. They manage, and Eddie dumps Dan in bed after some careful maneuvering around the apartment, prying off his shoes, rolling him onto his side—he probably won’t throw up, he didn’t drink _that_ much, but Eddie knows it’s better to be safe than sorry—and covering him with a light blanket before retreating from the room.

 

“Do you want to sleep on the couch?” Annie offers, holding out a glass of water as she pads over on bare feet from the kitchen toward him.

 

“Thanks,” Eddie says, and drinks down the water—Venom can probably kill a hangover, but Eddie doesn’t know that he trusts Venom to _do_ it—before handing back the glass and shaking his head. “I have work in the morning. But I’ll see you this weekend?”

 

“Brunch,” Annie agrees.

 

“I look like a third wheel when we brunch, Annie,” Eddie whines, but he only half means it.

 

“Just because your partner is inside of you,” Anne counters, and then blushes faintly, glancing away. “You know what I mean.”

 

Eddie grins but doesn’t dare laugh at her. “I know,” he agrees. “Bye Annie. See you soon.”

 

“See you soon,” she agrees.

 

Eddie lets himself out and heads home, happy and warm. He texts Dan, _Thanks for hanging out,_ so that Dan will see it in the morning before he can talk himself into being embarrassed about getting a little bit drunk.

 

**I like Dan,** Venom declares.

 

_Me too,_ Eddie agrees. He’s looking forward to hanging out with the other man more, maybe some place without alcohol now that they know they can converse without Annie as a buffer or alcohol as a substitute in that role. Maybe a sports game? A basketball game, maybe, their team is getting better, or baseball season is about to start…

 

**Baseball is boring,** Venom says.

 

Eddie kind of agrees. _Dan might like it though,_ Eddie points out.

 

**…we can ask,** Venom allows.

 

Eddie grins. _Good._

***

 

He dreams that night about Dan’s warm hands, and his bright eyes, and his soft smile, those lips pressing against his own in his imagination…

 

_Fuck,_ he thinks to himself when he wakes up. _Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is my slow burn starting to go somewhere?! Guess we'll have to see! Lmk what you think, and as always, feel free to say if there's something you want to see and I'll try to work it in!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was a good start? Please comment what you think and even what you'd like to see, because I have some events outlined, but nothing is set in stone yet. <3 And as always, feel free to prompt me any shorter fics for the ot4 over on tumblr as flowerparrish, or just come and chat about Venom with me.


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